I've had not much reading time lately, what with part time work and interaction with grandchildren, but one volume that I found particularly intriguing was a new novel by Antanas Sileika, a Lithuanian, now Canadian.
In his native land, Sileika discovered and read the Journals and records of the Lithuanian underground from the late thirties until the 1950s. From these Journals, he produced a novel - Underground - about the life of those who were strong nationalists and thus fought first, the German Nazis, and then, after the Soviet occupation, the "Reds" as they called them. This underground resistance went on until the last of the resistance fighters died in the mid-fifties!
The story is gritty and violent, but maintains a thread of humanity through the central character, Lukas, a former scholar, now an underground legend. We follow him through the forests, into Sweden and then France as he attempts to raise money for their cause. Along the way, he marries Elena, who supposedly is killed in a Red raid. After moving to France and after some time has passed, Lukas marries again - to Monika - and they have a child. Lukas returns to Lithuania at the urgent request of his former leader. In fact, the invitation is a lure to allow the Reds to catch and eliminate him. In the process, Lukas discovers that Elana is alive and has had a son, Jonas. Lukas surrenders himself in order to conceal his family's whereabouts. Much later, after Lukas' death, Jonas and Lukas' son by Monika, Luke, find one another, half brothers through war, and begin to piece together their father's life.
I think this book touched me so deeply because it carried me back to the days of WW2, when I as a child, remembering the chaos and terror of those days, and of the sacrifices people made for their families and for their country. In the face of the frantic right wing screams from south of the border, and the increasingly conservative values being imposed on our country by a government demonstrating its heartlessness again and again, Sileika's book is a potent reminder of what it costs individuals to maintain their freedom in the face of oppression of whatever kind.
I watch Romney and Ryan and fear for democracy as we know it in the US. I listen to Harper, Toews and Baird and harbour the same feelings about my own country. Dissent is being choked off, critique is buried or crushed economically. The vulnerable are threatened, and the young brainwashed about the importance of "conservative Canadian values." The country I grew up in, and matured in, is dissolving before my eyes. And I feel helpless to do anything.
A recent McLean's article on the Dieppe Raid assisted in this process of seeing things again through the eyes of a wartime child. General make stupid decisions, and privates lose their lives because of it. I remember my Dad saying, during the Viet Nam war; "They shouldn't send eighteen year old kids to fight. They don't know anything yet, and they need to live. Send the old farts, like me (he was in his 50's at the time). We'd march a bit, and then sit down and have tea - ask the locals where the good tea was. And if we got killed, so what? We've had a chance to live!"
I think it would be a similar parallel if we asked our leaders to live on a welfare cheque for a month or two, in order to feel the squeeze down at the bottom of the pile. Decisions might get a bit more real…and perhaps a lot less frequent. At least that's how I feel today.
In his native land, Sileika discovered and read the Journals and records of the Lithuanian underground from the late thirties until the 1950s. From these Journals, he produced a novel - Underground - about the life of those who were strong nationalists and thus fought first, the German Nazis, and then, after the Soviet occupation, the "Reds" as they called them. This underground resistance went on until the last of the resistance fighters died in the mid-fifties!
The story is gritty and violent, but maintains a thread of humanity through the central character, Lukas, a former scholar, now an underground legend. We follow him through the forests, into Sweden and then France as he attempts to raise money for their cause. Along the way, he marries Elena, who supposedly is killed in a Red raid. After moving to France and after some time has passed, Lukas marries again - to Monika - and they have a child. Lukas returns to Lithuania at the urgent request of his former leader. In fact, the invitation is a lure to allow the Reds to catch and eliminate him. In the process, Lukas discovers that Elana is alive and has had a son, Jonas. Lukas surrenders himself in order to conceal his family's whereabouts. Much later, after Lukas' death, Jonas and Lukas' son by Monika, Luke, find one another, half brothers through war, and begin to piece together their father's life.
I think this book touched me so deeply because it carried me back to the days of WW2, when I as a child, remembering the chaos and terror of those days, and of the sacrifices people made for their families and for their country. In the face of the frantic right wing screams from south of the border, and the increasingly conservative values being imposed on our country by a government demonstrating its heartlessness again and again, Sileika's book is a potent reminder of what it costs individuals to maintain their freedom in the face of oppression of whatever kind.
I watch Romney and Ryan and fear for democracy as we know it in the US. I listen to Harper, Toews and Baird and harbour the same feelings about my own country. Dissent is being choked off, critique is buried or crushed economically. The vulnerable are threatened, and the young brainwashed about the importance of "conservative Canadian values." The country I grew up in, and matured in, is dissolving before my eyes. And I feel helpless to do anything.
A recent McLean's article on the Dieppe Raid assisted in this process of seeing things again through the eyes of a wartime child. General make stupid decisions, and privates lose their lives because of it. I remember my Dad saying, during the Viet Nam war; "They shouldn't send eighteen year old kids to fight. They don't know anything yet, and they need to live. Send the old farts, like me (he was in his 50's at the time). We'd march a bit, and then sit down and have tea - ask the locals where the good tea was. And if we got killed, so what? We've had a chance to live!"
I think it would be a similar parallel if we asked our leaders to live on a welfare cheque for a month or two, in order to feel the squeeze down at the bottom of the pile. Decisions might get a bit more real…and perhaps a lot less frequent. At least that's how I feel today.
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